"Mastering the Art of French Cooking", "The Joy of Cooking", Alice Waters' "The Art of Simple Foods", "On Food and Cooking"all spring to mind right away.
We collect them like grigris warding off the potential of a failed soufflé or a hollandaise gone bad. I know there are others, but they sit central in the American mind as the backbone of any essential aspiring gourmand's basic education in food.
And that begs the question in my mind, do they do this in other countries? Are there a handful of deadly important cookbooks in France that get handed from parents to children, or stolen with a passel of notes and scribblings inside? Do the Germans have some cookbook that is a bastion of tradition? Do the Japanese read the recipes in some revered cookbook like they're gripping narrative?
Or is this a uniquely American invention? And if so, where does it come from? Why these books? What does it say about who we are as Americans?
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And in the spirit of full disclosure, I should add that I have a three of the four cookbooks listed above, so even I am not immune to collecting grigris.
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